The lost joy of music piracy • Hacker News Board

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#51

Post by eisa01 » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC

It's important to remember that to this day, streaming sites do not have a full archive of the music out there. There is still a need for music piracy

Even albums mentioned in the Norwegian business magazine D2 can be impossible to find in legit channels. Your only option is to buy used CDs on Discogs for 50-100 USD, or know your way around the successors of these sites

These CDs weren’t even on Oink or What (or did not survive the transitions)

https://www.dn.no/d2/musikk/stena-line/lars-holte/spotify/ha...

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#52

Post by bayesianbot » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC

flipped wrote: post #4

Did everyone forget about soulseek? It's still very much alive, been using it for years.

And imo slskd is fantastic client for soulseek, I just found it few weeks back

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#53

Post by noduerme » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:52 AM UTC

tmountain wrote: post #47

noduerme wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such small potatoes. Anyone putting out an album on Bandcamp is probably thrilled that someone would want to pirate it.

As a musician, I can agree with this 100%.

Ditto!

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#54

Post by smcleod » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:53 AM UTC

minikomi wrote: post #41

Very fond memories of using Audiogalaxy, and also soulseek. Soulseek especially had a community where you found someone who was into the same kind of music as you (obscure breakcore! japanese garage punk!) and could browse their collections, and chat to them also! What a wonderful way to make music friends and get good recommendations.

Soulseek is still going hard.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#55

Post by bluescrn » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:54 AM UTC

ColdStream wrote: post #39

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people want more than "mystery meat" levels of audio quality.

I once did a blind test on myself. A FLAC audio file and a 128Kbit Ogg vorbis file of the same track that I could switch between as I pleased but without knowing which was playing. Yeah, I cannot tell the difference. I am absolutely sure others can, but not me. I also think credit goes to far better encoders today than what we had 25 years ago.

Hearing also degrades over time. In my 20s I was a lot more fussy about audio formats and hi-fi gear.

Approaching 50, with less sensitive ears and a bit of tinnitus, I’m happy with the convenience of Bluetooth headphones and whatever format Spotify uses.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#56

Post by CoolestBeans » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:57 AM UTC

One thing I miss about the iPod era is that Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music. It doesn't take much look at how much music an iPod could store, how much music cost, and how much people had in disposable income to spend on music to realize that music had to come from other means. The iPod and P2P file sharing were incredibly synergistic in a way that makes me giggle. The iTunes store is just as much about getting the record companies on board as it is about running a legitimate music store. I don't know I guess it reminds me of a time when tech disruption was in the consumer's favor and it was frustrating exploitive companies.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#57

Post by muppetman » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:57 AM UTC

omgmajk wrote: post #28

Music piracy is alive and well if you know where to look. Some places has been mentioned in this thread already. Of course there is no replacing the magic of early 2000-2010's p2p sites like OiNK, What and Waffles - but well curated sites still exist.

Indeed. I'm a member of a few music trackers and they have a lot of great stuff, but What's archive was amazing. One of my proudest things I own is a What.cd beer cooler I bought from them.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#58

Post by artemonster » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

soundworlds wrote: post #49

Reminds me of the System of a Down - Legend of Zelda song that was popular around Limewire, etc Years later it was uncovered that it was never System of a Down, but one Joe Pleiman https://kotaku.com/no-system-of-a-down-did-not-make-a-zelda-...

A lot of my peers were adamant that nirvanas song is „smeells like team spirit“ because this is how pirated mp3 on local DC (i think it was called that) p2p exchange was called

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#59

Post by sondr3 » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 7:01 AM UTC

I still have my invitation email to What.CD and cherish the stuff I found and downloaded on it. After it went away I didn't do the reasonable thing and migrate to RED/OPS immediately, though I've joined OPS in recent years. It does not feel the same, but that's probably more me being older and less optimistic than during the What.CD days. I have fond memories of reading the forum threads about jazz when I was getting into it, or looking at all the weird collections people made (I vividly remember laughing at the "albums with feet on the cover"-collection) or finding really obscure, local artists you couldn't find anywhere else or going to the public library to rent CD's to rip and upload for credits. Fun times.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#60

Post by abhikul0 » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 7:01 AM UTC

> Most people didn't have the same kind of experience, they got the LimeWire version which was the equivalent of wading through a dollar store that’s just been ransacked and shit’s all over the floor.

Heh, I often went a step down and recorded internet radio using RadioSure. This little utility split each track into its own file which was pretty neat and handy to a younger me. Shoutout to Ryan Seacrests' AT40 for the weekly charts on the weekends, it kept my "collection" fresh ;-) Although, it was mostly 128-256kbps mp3 but it didn't matter to me, it was fun.